November 6, 2011

Tongue entanglement

Language is often taken for granted, or given the regard for the humanity’s unloved child.

Diarmaid Ferriter of The Limits of Libertyventured the classic frown on his RTE One show. Irish people speak English owing to cultural submissiveness, avouched Mr. Ferriter. You cannot dominate someone who does not speak your language. These have been the English to speak English; they brought the language.

It does not spend much, and it can give a lot. ;)

Most businesses in Ireland work on English language papers and cash. People have English language business talks. People learn in English language schools. People go to English language medics and shops. Many have never learned British. Irish English has a distinct sounding, one might find more pleasurable than that from over the Thames, as Pete McCarthy has noticed.

Getting rid of all this would not be freedom. It would be a disaster.

Contrary to Mr. Ferriter, I think Irish English should have a corpus. Autonomous language environments always have own corpora. Google brings mostly Gaelic-English glosses, should you key in the phrase ‘Irish English dictionary’. Limerick university does not focus on Irish English, offering courses. The International Corpus of English requires a request form, and does not promise anything.

Bus tours in Dublin symbolize English with the Union Jack. The Irish flag represents Celtic.

There are two kinds of power, The Limits said. The police and the military were the ‘hard power’. Language was the ‘soft power’.

I agree that saying ‘come in’ can be physically more efficient than carrying people into rooms, especially if the persons would be wholesome. Yet saying ‘fish and chips’ does not give a Leo Burdock, unless there is the cash to make the deal.

Language does not have an overpowering potential. More, political debates world round prove humans phylogenetically capable of days and more of a language production to have no influence on thought or decisions. ;)